1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to conferencing technology, and more particularly, to a control unit for an audio/multimedia conference.
2. Prior Art
A control unit for multipoint audio/multimedia conferencing is a device located in a node of a network that receives several audio signals on channels from access ports. The audio signals are processed according to a signaling protocol in the circuit switched or packet switched networks like but not limited to Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Internet Protocol (IP), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), H.320, H.323 or a similar protocol. The control unit for multipoint audio and multimedia conferencing processes the received audio signals and distributes the processed audio streams to the appropriate channels. (An example of such a system is Polycom's MGC-100.)
The current prior art architecture, as detailed in the description of FIGS. 1 to 3, has several limitations. One limitation is that a heavy computational load is placed on a Central Audio Conference Processor (CACP) unit, resulting from handling all participating streams in a conference. In the art the CACP is sometimes referred to as a bridge. However, in the remainder of the specification it is referred to as a CACP. Another limitation is that a heavy input/output load is placed on the CACP unit because the participating streams must be received and transmitted from and/or to each participant codec. These two limitations restrict the size and number of conferences that may be realized on a single processing unit. In addition, because of the inefficient utilization of resources, a situation might occur in which codecs are still available but there is no single CACP with enough resources to set up a conference (resources fragmentation).